Page 15 of Fatal By Design
The cross pendant was still clutched in her palm. As she set it on a small round table near the sofa, she divulged what she’d seen. Hugh stood close, so that she didn’t have to speak very loud for him to hear.
“Celine betrayed Millie,” she whispered. “I don’t know how, just that she did, and Millie appeared shocked and devastated to learn of it.”
“No mention of a ring?”
She shook her head. “Or of a letter. Celine must have gotten away from the kidnapper somehow. She was running out of the woods and into a field by a river when…” Audrey stopped. She had purposefully pushed away from that part of the vision, not wanting to see it or experience it through Celine’s eyes.
Aware of what she meant to say, Hugh brushed his fingers down her arm, then gently gripped her elbow. He stood close; too close to be proper. The clicking of shoes neared the door and he stepped away just before Mrs. Larson reappeared.
“If you’ll follow me,” the older woman said, and she led them from the receiving room to the stairs, up to the first floor of the home.
Reddingate was about the same size as Haverfield, but in Tudor style with gables and slopes, lending it a medieval look. The style was refined, if a bit aged, and Audrey sensed the décor had not been updated for quite some time. It surprised her, as the dark wood and heavy furnishings and wine red carpets did not seem in Millie’s taste at all. Then again, what did she know of her sister? Nothing much, she realized.
Her bedchamber smelled of rose oil. The silver-gray silk paper on the walls reflected lamplight and the new fire, building in the hearth grate. Mrs. Larson stood aside as Audrey went to her sister’s side table and opened the slim drawer; it was empty. Utterly bare. It was suspicious, though Audrey could not articulate why even in her own mind.
The housekeeper watched them as Hugh opened a few drawers on a short bureau and gently pushed aside the items they held. Audrey moved to a small writing desk near a window, feeling Mrs. Larson’s watchful stare on her back. The woman was only making sure her mistress’s belongings were treated well; she might have also been hesitant to leave a man and woman alone in a bedchamber.
When Audrey opened the writing desk’s main drawer and reached inside, her knuckles collided with a small nub of metal. She flipped her hand and felt the metal—a latch. She coughed loudly to clear her throat as she pulled the latch, and sure enough, she heard a soft, telling click underneath her coughing. A hidden compartment.
Audrey kept coughing, her throat becoming raw as she turned to Mrs. Larson.
“Could I bother you for a glass of water, Mrs. Larson? I know tea is being prepared, but I don’t think…” she trailed off with another false cough, her eyes welling with tears at the effort to sound authentic.
“Oh, yes, Your Grace, the tea, forgive me. I think Hannah must have brought it to the receiving room.” She started through the open door, but then paused, clearly torn between standing her post and accommodating a dowager duchess.
“Water would do just fine, Mrs. Larson, thank you,” she said, clearing her throat again. She dropped into the desk’s chair and fanned herself with her hand; that pushed Mrs. Larson into a decision. She swept from the room, and knowing she would not be away for long, Audrey immediately hinged at the hips and peered under the writing desk.
“You are a terrible actress,” Hugh said as he came to the desk. Audrey cut him a glare as she reached for the small shelf under the desk that the latch had released.
“Then you will be relieved to know I have no designs on shirking society completely and joining the theater.” The reply elicited a roll of his eyes and a snort of laughter. Her fingers touched a stack of papers, and she drew them out.
“A hidden compartment,” she said, bringing a bundle of papers, bound together in ribbon, into view. They were letters, all folded with their emerald-green wax seals broken.
“They look to be all from the same person,” Hugh said.
Audrey set the stack on the desk and pulled the silken ribbon’s knot. She lifted the top letter and opened it. Hugh took the next one from the stack. They had all been sealed with the same green wax, a letter C pressed into the seal. As they were limited to a minute at the most before the housekeeper returned, Audrey could only skim the letter. From the greeting, she knew the nature of it.
“My dearest Millie,” Hugh read from his aloud. Audrey’s read:My darling Millie.
“They are love letters,” Audrey said, her astonishment growing. Millie had been hiding them, even from her maid. Was this how Miss Woods had betrayed her? At the bottom of the page, the man had signed his name. “Reggie. No surname.”
“He would have no call to sign it, if they were already on intimate terms,” Hugh said. Then, still reading, “He speaks of living in India. Exports of fabric. Cotton, muslin, silk...”
Audrey quickly read the first lines of the letter in her hand. “Odd. He says he is in London in this letter. And that he’ll be at Haverfield on August the sixteenth. He asks to meet her there and wants to know if she still has it.It?”
“The sixteenth is tomorrow,” Hugh said.
Audrey peered at the date etched at the top of the page. “This was written a little over a week ago. It must be the same letter Grimes mentioned. The one that excited Millie.”
She held her breath as she set the paper down to remove her gloves. Hugh lowered the letter in his hand. “Audrey. Maybe you shouldn’t—”
She ignored him and his worry and gripped the paper again, closing her eyes and opening her mind. But as usual, paper was notoriously weak when it came to retaining energy and transmitting visions. All that cropped up in her mind was the foggiest image of Millie reading the letter. And then it was gone again.
Sighing heavily, she set the paper back onto the stack. “Nothing. But if she was supposed to meet this Reggie fellow, he might have something to do with her disappearance.”
She puzzled over what the ‘it’ was that he referred to in the letter. Was Millie supposed to have something of his?
Hugh frowned, setting down the letter he held and picking up another one. “They were to meet at Haverfield tomorrow, not Greenbriar today. So why did she direct her driver for Kent?”
